Responding to reports this afternoon that the Saltire Prize will not now be awarded until 2015, Labour's Shadow Energy Minister Lewis Macdonald said:
 
"Alex Salmond's promise to promote Scotland as a world leader in renewable energy is fast turning into a major national embarrassment.
 
"The SNP was elected in May 2007. In their first ever Spending Review paper, they said they would be 'launching the first ever Saltire Prize for innovation with the first challenge for 2008 focusing on renewable energy.' In addition to the prize, they also announced in November 2007 that there would be 'a £2million annual fund to recognise innovation' – now due to be launched in Spring 2009."
 
Scottish Labour leader Iain Gray MSP said:
 
"This morning I supported the Institution of Mechanical Engineers when they said the Saltire Prize was not enough and a further £40m was required. Now we find out it will be awarded a full eight years after the First Minister took office. Alex Salmond should be too embarrassed to show his face in Edinburgh Castle."
 
Lewis Macdonald MSP, continued: "Alex Salmond announced in Washington in April 2008 that there would be a £10 million Saltire Prize for the best project of commercial scale that could be deployed in Scottish waters. Only two weeks ago, Jim Mather told me that the £10 million for the Saltire Prize had been budgeted for 2010/11. That was a very disappointing answer, given Ministers' rhetoric about Scotland taking the lead and the impression they had given of the prize being awarded early in the current Parliament.
 
"Now it turns out they plan on awarding the Saltire Prize not at the end of this parliamentary session, as feared, but at the end of the next one! Enterprising Scottish companies will hear this news tonight in stunned disbelief. Far from Scotland leading the world, it seems that Alex Salmond plans to make an award after the rest of the world have left us far behind.
 
"Last week, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers published a considered report on what Scotland would need to succeed in the race for wave power and tide power. They said the Saltire Prize would not be enough, and that a further £40million fund would be required. Now they know that Alex Salmond is actually planning to award the Saltire Prize a full 8 years after taking office.
 
"Labour  - in our last 12 months put £13.5 million into a Wave and Tidal Energy Scheme (WATES), which SNP Ministers have failed to follow up with a new scheme. Instead, their much-vaunted prize will come in at a total cost to government of £1.25 million a year over 8 years, and at 2007 prices in 2015."

ENDS

2 December 2008